Since his award-winning film criticism in the pages of Cinema Canada magazine as of the early 1980s, Michael Dorland has played a leading role in rethinking some of the nostrums of Canadian cultural criticism and policies, in a number of key books and articles. Of the latter, his 1987 article on the role played by “ressentiment” in Canadian culture has been widely cited. His books have dealt with the development of Canadian film policy, the cultural industries in Canada, and the role played by comparative systems of law in configuring (and confounding) the formation of the Canadian public sphere. His 2009 book, Inventing a Pathology of Catastrophe for Holocaust Survival (Brandeis University Press), develops the ideas presented above by looking also at Scandinavian, American, and Israeli entanglements with Holocaust memory and survival. He is a Professor of Communication in the School of Journalism and Communication Studies at Carleton University.